A food zealot's burning passion

Steve Barnes

Updated 7:02 am, Thursday, August 22, 2013

Chick Hawksley at Jugs and Mugs in Albany.
/ Times Union

Chef and general manager Chick Hawksley, second from left, trains staff member Carl Pierce of Albany, left, Alfonzo Hill of Albany and Janelle Anzinao of Albany, right, Friday, Aug. 16, 2013, in the kitchen at Jugs & Mugs on Madison Ave., in Albany, N.Y. The staff was training and menu sampling for new restaurant. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Chef and general manager Chick Hawksley, second from left, trains...

A sampling of the menu items are displayed on a table Friday, Aug. 16, 2013, at Jugs & Mugs on Madison Ave., in Albany, N.Y. The staff was training and menu sampling for new restaurant. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

A sampling of the menu items are displayed on a table Friday, Aug....

Chef and general manager Chick Hawksley, center, trains staff Friday, Aug. 16, 2013, in the kitchen at Jugs & Mugs on Madison Ave., in Albany, N.Y. The staff was training and menu sampling for new restaurant. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Chef and general manager Chick Hawksley, center, trains staff...

Staff members sample food after learning how it's prepared and presented Friday, Aug. 16, 2013, at Jugs & Mugs on Madison Ave., in Albany, N.Y. The staff was training and menu sampling for new restaurant. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Staff members sample food after learning how it's prepared and...

Sign on the exterior of Jugs & Mugs on Madison Ave. Friday, Aug. 16, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. The staff was training and menu sampling for new restaurant. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Chick Hawksley was holding a church service in the kitchen of a new Albany restaurant.

With the urgent tone and dramatic delivery of a born preacher, the chef said, referring to pork belly, "We're going to cut it down into cubes" — he gestured with thumb and forefinger to demonstrate the size — "then we're going to fry" — he pointed toward the deep-fryer — "that bad boy. That's going to go into the chicharron taco," he said, stamping his cowboy-booted foot and snapping his fingers, as if he were a matador or a flamenco dancer.

Hawksley's crew of about eight young staffers, who seemed to regard him with a mixture of fervor and wonderment more often reserved for an evangelist or messianic creative guru, nodded and murmured affirmations of deliciousness. (You can see a video of Hawksley talking to the crew on timesunion.com.)

A most unusual restaurant birth is occurring inside 849 Madison Ave., in Albany's student ghetto and in a space that once was home to Sadie Klutz. The notorious college bar was shut down after a raid in February 2011 found the place packed to more than double capacity, including 40 underage patrons.

Adults in the neighborhood are understandably leery of having such a bar reborn, and so they reacted with noisy opposition when they saw the replacement business was calling itself Jugs and Mugs. Combined with its logo — showing a buxom, raven-haired, tattooed beauty sitting on a barrel, overflowing beer mug in her hand — the impression was formed of the intent to create a rowdy, Hooters-style establishment. Some didn't like that. Others found the name and logo demeaning to women.

Hawksley is adamant: "This is not a college bar; things are not going to crazy at 9 p.m. It's about great food and beer."

But he's stuck with Jugs and Mugs. By the time Hawksley entered the picture earlier this year as chef and general manager, the name and logo were in place, established by owner David Cardona of Voorheesville, who is making his first venture into the restaurant business. Cardona doesn't want to change them, even though they're likely among the reasons Jugs and Mugs has yet to receive a necessary permit from the city's Board of Zoning Appeals; the panel deferred ruling on the matter after a hearing last week during which community members spoke out against the business. Without BZA approval, a certificate of occupancy won't be issued, and without a CO the business can't open.

The original plan was to open today. Cardona said he hopes the board issues an approval at next week's meeting, meaning he could open for at least part of Labor Day weekend. But the actual date remains uncertain.

This infuriates Hawksley, who spent 17 years in Manhattan restaurants and the last nine working in San Francisco. When talking about opposition to the name he works himself into a lather of high dudgeon, usually along one of two lines.

"The name of a business is not within the purview of the (BZA)," he'll say to anyone who'll listen. When it is pointed out, by people such as Leah Golby, who represents the neighborhood as a member of the Albany Common Council, that the regulatory body is indeed tasked with considering the effect a new business will have on its community, and that a provocative name and logo might attract a crowd the neighbors don't want to have to deal with again, Hawksley changes strategies. Of the city, he likes to say, "They'd rather see a stinking pit here than let a business open that will employ these kids, that will give them jobs and opportunities. If you're going to help someone pull himself up by his bootstraps, he first has to be able to buy shoes." (After meeting Hawksley and hearing his vision for Jugs and Mugs, Golby said she supports the restaurant, but believes the name should be changed.)

In any case, Hawksley would rather talk about the food, which is much better, more interesting and ambitious than one would expect in a former college bar. It's a mouthwatering blend of Southern, barbecue and hearty pub fare: New Orleans shrimp, 8-ounce burgers, Reubens from house-made corned beef, pulled pork, pot pie, buttermilk fried chicken with waffles and redeye gravy, bacon-tomato-jalapeno mac-n-cheese. Hawksley is teaching his kids, as he calls them, to make all of the restaurant's bread. No frozen products will be used, including fries cut fresh daily.

"He's very intense. I've never met anyone like him," said Nadine Reutzel, who is Jugs and Mugs' bar manager after a stint in sales with a liquor distributor. "But when you taste his food, you can see why we're all so excited."

At the deep-fryer, where chicken was bubbling, a young woman was insisting to a colleague that they shouldn't add onions at the same time. She'd been so indoctrinated by Hawksley about avoiding cross-contamination when working with chicken that she thought it had to be cooked separately.

"It's OK," Hawksley said. "You don't want to put the onions on a cutting board where you just had raw chicken, right?" She nodded. He said, "But they're both being cooked in the hot oil, right?" Another nod. "It's so hot — wham, it'll take care of anything bad on there, so you can cook them together, right?" Nod.

He said, "This place is about these kids learning how to make great food, serving customers, making people happy. Why is the rest of this (crap) getting in the way of that?"